Squeezed.
Those Bucs fans who listened to the JoeBucsFan.com Hour on WDAE-AM 620/WDAE-FM 95.7 yesterday heard Joe speculate about this.
The Joes were trying to figure out why Ronde Barber the past two weeks on the WFLA-TV Channel 8 broadcasts of Bucs’ worthless preseason games, went well out of his way several times to strongly suggest Sean Tucker was on thin ice with the Bucs.
The Joes have been to all but one practice — and that was a condensed “shells” practice where there was hardly any hitting — and neither of the Joes could figure out why Barber would even remotely think Tucker was in danger of being released unless it was a plant (VERY likely) or Barber knew of something off the field that the general public did not.
Tucker had a fine training camp.
Joe speculated maybe this was a well-coordinated scheme by the Bucs to squeeze Tucker for a pay cut to help pay for Vita Vea.
Well, per a missive from Jeremy Fowler of ESPN, it sure smells like that’s what happened. Fowler said Tucker took damn near a 30 percent paycut — he was due $3.5 million if he stayed on the roster — and agreed to a contract for $2.5 million.
Always and forever, adhere to the old cliché “follow the money.”
RB Sean Tucker agreed to a one-year, $2.5M guaranteed contract to remain with the Bucs, per source, along with incentives.
Was due $3.52M on a restricted tender, and now he returns on a new one-year deal. pic.twitter.com/wldumXspb3